Account-Based Marketing – How to Get Started

As the world is shifting, and digital mediums are getting more dominant, sales teams in SMB’s (Small-mid sized Businesses) and large organizations are heavily relying on marketing teams for sales ready leads or perhaps more qualified leads.

With this sales and marketing line blurring with the marketing technologies that organizations continue to introduce, account-based marketing (ABM) is the new big “thing” in the business-to-business (B2B) marketing world. The basic idea of ABM is targeting your business to a small, selected group of potential customers as opposed to everyone. Though it has been around for decades, the ABM method has been primarily used by large companies seeking bigger accounts. But, in the last decade, ABM has become a buzzword and marketers have come to realize its strength and potential. In fact, 90% of marketers surveyed understand the importance of ABM to B2B ventures. Even then, only 20% of marketers have a full-time ABM program in place. It is still uncharted waters.

Benefits of ABM:

The benefits of ABM include: a better use of resources and money; a more focused approach; the chance to net bigger clients; and better dialogue with your customers.

A strong ABM approach will integrate several forms of communication such as email campaigns & automation; social media advertisements; outbound marketing, be content-driven, and in most cases will be a long, continued campaign. The idea is to open a dialogue with the potential customer and meet their needs. Here are a few things to consider if you want to kickoff an ABM campaign:

Who Are Your Target Accounts?

What kind of companies are you looking at? Whose attention do you think you can capture? You can generate a list of target accounts by looking at your current customers and finding similar businesses. It will be fairly easy to find potential clients for your products. Aim for a minimum of 50 target accounts.

Create Goals

There is no point in doing something if you don’t measure the success of it. Don’t waste your time; make sure your ABM approach is working. Create quantitative goals for the success of your program. Make them realistic. Don’t get discouraged if you are not making those objectives in the initial stages. It doesn’t mean that ABM is not working; you may just need to tweak your style. After all, the objective is to win, grow and retain your key accounts.

Develop a Marketing Strategy

Once you have created a target account list and set goals, it is time to develop a strategy for your ABM. Try different channels; your approach should have different segments in multiple arenas including email campaigns, paid advertising, and videos. Remember to treat the strategy as an ongoing, sustained campaign as opposed to a one-shot. You want to create a toolkit that helps you develop your clients experience as well as create potential for account growth.

Analytics

Take a long, hard look at that data once you have started your ABM approach. Has it been working? Are sales up from last year? Analytics will give you an idea of what you are doing right and what you may need to change. Your ABM strategy should align with your sales outcomes and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns each step of the way.

Get Professional Help

ABM helps marketers and marketing teams better align their strategies with sales outcomes while creating a winning experience for the customer. This can further help achieve revenue outcomes for the organization. Unless you have extensive experience with ABM (and most people don’t), your best bet would be to bring in some outside help. At Measure Marketing, we will bring your company higher visibility through ABM. We also provide services with social media management, email marketing, and mobile marketing. The best internet marketing company in the Toronto area, Measure Marketing will help your company harness the power of the internet and increase your revenue. Contact us today!

Arti Sharma

Arti Sharma is an Online Marketing Strategist and the founder of Measure Marketing Results Inc. Arti has been helping businesses market themselves more effectively for over a decade. For the past 7 years she has developed her niche in online marketing and now helps businesses of all sizes get found online and convert traffic to leads and customers. Arti has held several workshops and now holds free seminars for local businesses in the Ontario region. You can learn more about registering for these seminars and marketing your business online on her website at www.measuremarketing.net.

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